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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Long time no see: It's a new recipe! (Baked Apple Muffins)

Hello dear readers!

This is a premier! It will be the first bilingual blogpost featuring one of my recipes :D I think it's a good vocabulary training (for me, but maybe also for you? ^^) and I want to share my recipies with as many people as I can :D So here we go, I hope you'll like it!

The year's almost over and I didn't really have a lot of opportunities to bake, which is kinda sad. I miss it a lot, and I'm looking forward to having my own kitchen soon again ♥ Since it is Christmas time, I want to share a wintry recipe with you, that I came up with last year and prepared for dessert at our Christmas dinner. I call them "Baked Apple Muffins", because the taste is inspired by baked apples :)

Unfortunately I didn't take any proper photos, and did not prepare them again since then, but, well, they look like muffins :)

But here you can see one of them XD I really have to do them again to take better photos.

Step 1: Apple Sauce

So, for startes, you will have to prepare apple sauce! It's difficult to give exact amounts of what to use here, but basically you need:

★ 2-4 apples

★
a few spoons of water

★
approx. 50g sugar (white or brown)

★(cinnamon)

Peel the apples and cut them in small pieces. Put them in a pot with the sugar and water. How much you will need of everything depends . if you have larger apples, 2 will definitely be enough, but apple sauce can be stored so it doesn't matter if you prepare too much. The amount of sugar will depend on the sweetness of the apples and your personal taste. The muffins themselves are not too sweet, so you might want to keep a "sour" touch there. Anyway, better start out with less water in the beginning. As soon as the apple pieces are cooked soft, purée them with the help of a hand blender, ideally. The sauce should not be too liquid for this use. Now you can also add cinnamon (grounded), if you like.

Step 2: Walnut brittle

★
100g walnuts (chopped)

★
100g sugar (white or brown)

You can prepare this a day in advance to allow the brittle to solidify for sufficient time.

The amounts can vary. I am basically just making these up right now, because I really can't remember how much I used, I just poured sugar into a hot pan to melt it, until it seemed to be enough :)
The walnuts should be chopped to very small bits, and added to the melted sugar. Keep the pan really hot and keep stirring! Spread out a sheet of baking paper and pour the mixture on there. Spread it as flat as possible. Good luck with cleaning the pan now :D

You will want to prepare these with paper cups in your a muffin tin ideally, because they can get a bit sticky. The dough is prepared by mixing eggs, cream and melted butter, than adding the sugar, and lastly flour and baking powder. Again, you can add as much cinnamon as you want, I recommend to use really quite a lot, to make the taste noticeable in the end. It goes perfectly with the apple sauce, you will see!
Now fill the paper cups with not more than one to two tablespoons full of the dough. Then take a teaspoon and add the apple sauce! Try to make a little "mould" in the dough where you put the sauce, so the muffin will later have a "liquid" core. Cover the apple sauce with dough again.
You will probably have some dough left over in the end, it's better than overfilling the molds!

While you heat the oven to ~200°C, mix the brown sugar with the grounded nuts and a little bit of cinnamon. Sprinkle the mixture on top of the muffins. The brown sugar will caramelize in the oven and make a little crunchy crust on top of the muffins. You can also leave this step out (see Step 4).

Step 4: Showdown!

The not-yet-brittle should have solidified at that time. Take the "plate" of caramelized sugar and nuts and chop it into small bits again, or even better, smash it with a hammer.

You have now two options: If you prepared the muffins with a sugar-crust, you could serve them with a bit of whipped cream and spread the brittle on the cream (as in the picture). Or you could give these muffins a more fancy touch and give them a little topping of whipped cream, making them look like cup cakes. Of course this second option is better suited if they don't have the sugar crust.

You can decorate the paper cups with a ribbon before serving. The muffins should ideally be prepared freshly, so that the soft core is still warm, however if you add a cream topping you should take care that it's not too hot and the cream won't melt.

That's it!

The recipe leaves a lot of room for improvisation and you can adapt it easily to fit your personal taste. I hope you like the idea of the soft core and have fun preparing them. If you do, let me know! :D

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